I purchased an Ancestry DNA kit for myself and a friend late last year, and after some procrastination and queuing, I got my results back today.

I am somewhat disappointed to learn there are no Maury Povich-style reveals in my past – my results did not show that I am secretly African, or mysteriously uncategorizable, or any anything at all that I didn’t expect, with one exception:

I am 1% more Great British than I am East Asian.

They HAVE to let me in now, right?!

damn ethnics

This means I’m definitely not adopted and living a huge lie like I always hoped feared – it’s pretty much spot on with what I’d been told all my life. Some of the smaller percentages were interesting, too – at some point, several of my ancestors dipped their dingle in places far from home. The complete breakdown is as follows:

Trace Regions: 4% These are listed as tiny amounts appearing in your DNA and possibly by accident, and include Ireland, Iberian Peninsula, and Europe West

This was a pretty neat exercise. The Ancestry DNA test isn’t as detailed as the 23 and Me test (which covers health conditions you may be at risk for, genetic traits, potential drug responses, etc), but it’s also half the price. I might give the other test a try down the road, as I don’t know much about my medical history .. but for now, this is just one more piece in the “lemme in the UK” dossier I’m building just in case. Also, is cool. And I got to spit in a tube! Totally worth it.

Part of my job at The Lab is to ease new people into our environment and give them some knowledge so it looks like they know what they’re doing. I get all fresh meat for a couple of hours on their first or second day, we go over company policies and internal systems, and I send them on their merry way. It’s a good system.

Early last year – not long after I had started working here myself – a new guy joined one of our teams. We made plans for me to do my training thing the following morning, and I left him to the devices of other people for the day.

The next day rolls around, and it’s a wet one. I rode my scooter to work, and was rewarded with a torrential downpour – my pants were soaked right through, and I was late getting into the office. I ran to my desk then to the new guy, explaining that I was having a pants emergency and needed 15 minutes to wring myself out and then we could get started. He said fine, I tried to dry myself off as best I could, and we started the meeting.

We adjourned for lunch at 12, and started the meeting up again at 1. However, the new guy was nowhere to be seen. I told the others to hang on while I went hunting for the new guy, but when I was unable to find him, we continued without him. Whatever; I was sure there was a good explanation for his absence and we could just catch up later.

There was a good explanation, alright – the new guy quit. He walked into HR, told them he was quitting, and left after less than 36 hours on the job.

Why did he quit so suddenly?

MY PANTS WERE WET.

I am dead serious. He quit the company because my pants were wet. Specifically, he told HR that it was “the most unprofessional and ridiculous environment he had ever been in”, that I was “sloppy and inappropriate”, the rest of the team were “rude and incompetent”, and he had never been subjected to such an insult as being asked to delay a meeting because someone had wet pants.

This guy wasn’t some 60 year old from the Mad Men era; he was a fat slouchy neck beard who had mouth-breathing issues and an enormous chip on his shoulder. His team manager and I were pulled into HR to talk about the issue, and luckily she was just as incredulous as we were – we weren’t in trouble (although she did ask me to refrain from telling new people about my pants); it was just a formality because he lodged a complaint. WET PANTS! QUIT YOUR JOB AND RUN AWAY!

It later came to pass that another coworker in a different department knew this guy – he had worked at a company that this chap had just been fired from. He was fired because he took issue with something the team manager did, and reacted by throwing his headset down, sweeping everything off his desk and launching himself at the manager, swearing and yelling. Police were called. He went nuts and had to be escorted off the premises. None of this was known when he interviewed, and HR really wished she HAD known – it was actually noted that no one was really sure about this guy because he was “a little weird”, but we were desperate for new staff so they took a chance they would later regret.

It’s now become a running joke – when a new hire shows up for work on his or her third day, I congratulate them for making it further than this guy.

It’s been a while, but he’s resurfaced. He actually works for a client of ours, and had to call us for something. He’s been coming down to our office and demanding to speak to managers, throwing his (considerable but nonexistent) weight around, and barking orders left and right. He’s threatening to take his business elsewhere – except “his business” is the company he works for, and the company he works for is a tiny one-office non-for-profit CO-OP. He’s in absolutely no position to be making the demands he’s making, and I’ve personally volunteered to kick him in the nuts the next time he shows up at our offices trying to bitch us out and get the home numbers of managers because he thinks he deserves the same level of service given to our largest customer (who, for the record, don’t get our home numbers either). The fucker tried to get me in trouble, and for him to show up again with that kind of attitude means that it’s on. I’m small but mean. Try me.

This will be my first real performance review (other than the mini end-of-probation one I had last June) since 2001. I’m not *too* worried – after all, I am totally awesome – but there is still some apprehension.

I’m not up on my Bribing the Boss trends – cookies? Beer? Have we moved to straight cash yet? Money would sort of defeat the purpose as I’m angling for a substantial raise, but I still feel the need to cement a good review with underhanded trickery.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t think too hard about getting a raise. Last time I was sure I was having the Salary Increase Discussion I was actually fired instead.

I’m trying to write some documentation at work, and I know I’ve written something on it before I so go digging through my folders for old files. I find something I’d apparently written on the topic last February, so I open it up to see if it might help:

VOIP Training Outline

Overview:

What is VOIP?

Why would someone want it?

Setup:

What is required?

What connections are installed to run VOIP?

What equipment is used?

What information is the end user provided with?

Support:

What do we support?

What kinds of questions will be asked?

Should I know how to program the entire handset?

When should I escalate?

Catastrophe Actions:

What do I do when giant lizards take over the city?

When should I call the VOIP Mothership for assistance?

.. seriously, what the hell. Why do I DO things like that? And why am I so very amused at my own misdeeds that I will probably never stop?

So Kimli tagged me with that 25 things meme. But since this is a ‘blog and you already know at least 25 things, OR MORE, about me, I’m gonna do another meme that I wish I’d been tagged for instead. This one is the “list all the jobs you’ve had, in order.” Also, I tag KIMLI :)

Okay, let’s test that memory of mine!

Taco slinger in a tiny food court located outside the theatre at University Heights Mall in Victoria

It figures – as soon as I’m told I can’t do something, I’m all mad about it even though it’s what I wanted all along.

There’s a procedure at work that is usually done by the Advanced Gene-Splicing Team, but ever since I figured out how to do it, I’ve been just splicing the genes myself. It’s faster, I can ensure it gets done when I need it done, and hey who doesn’t want the chance to play god from time to time? Unfortunately, word got out that I can splice genes with the best of them and for the last couple weeks I’ve been finding myself splicing more and more genes at the request of others. It was making me very grumpy, as I wasn’t just doing the work of the AGST but also the Molecular Restructurers, the DNA Fundamentalists, AND the guy who ships out the body parts when we’re done with them.

I’ve been really spreading myself thin with these extra duties, and completely ignoring my actual job to do the work of others. Yesterday I was completely downtrodden and world-weary about the entire thing, and a morning meeting away from telling everyone that I would no longer be their bitch – all requests needed to go through to the appropriate departments and they would all do their own part. It’s only fair, after all. I was never meant to actually do all the stuff that I am currently doing.

When I returned from lunch yesterday afternoon, I had an email in my inbox from the leader of the AGST telling me I was no longer allowed to splice genes and that his team MUST be the splicers to guard against foreign antibodies invading the nucleus of the cells. That’s good; it’s what I wanted. Each department is responsible for their own work.

.. except I HATE being told that I can’t do something, and now I’m all pissy that I’m not allowed to splice genes anymore.

It’s not FAIR. I can totally do it. I’m good at it. I can check for errors; I know how. Is it because I’m a girl? Because I’m not white? Why won’t you let me splice genes? I’m good enough to be on the Advanced Gene-Splicing Team! LET ME DO YOUR WORK, DAMNIT!

Isn’t that stupid? I’m fully aware of how utterly irrational I’m being, but at the same time I am totally cranky about it all. I don’t want to do the work. Yesterday I had a mini freak out over having to do the work. I’ve been told I’m not allowed to do the work, and all of a sudden I am MAD that I can’t do the work that I didn’t want to do in the first place.